Saturday, November 17, 2012

Conflicts Due to Conflicting

The title seems rather weird, I imagine.  But hopefully it will make sense eventually.

The state of the WoW community (or lack thereof) is a frequent topic of discussion.  Stubborn of Sheep the Diamond recently made a post about trying to get people to find common ground in the concept of honoring the game itself.  The example given was a DPS who was just auto-attacking and simply not putting forth any effort in a dungeon (and how that makes the experience worse).

However, to properly talk about this subject, I think we need to distinguish between, for lack of better terms, regular jerks and situational jerks.  By that I mean there are some people who are always jerks, who leech, need on everything, troll, and generally abuse others as much as they can no matter the situation (regular jerks).  But others may generally be well behaved except when put in certain situations (situational jerks).  My goal here is not to excuse the situational jerks, but to understand why they may act the way they do in an effort to figure out a way to improve the situation.

Specifically, I'd like to talk about people who are regularly raiding heroic modes who do dungeons for valor (note: not all of these people are situational jerks, but some of them are).

But before we do that, let's analyze some main reasons for doing dungeons:

1. Seeing the dungeon (new stuff is cool the first few times)
2. Group content experience (people often like participating in groups)
3. Loot from the dungeon
4. Achievements
5. Valor

These reasons are not exclusive, in fact the more that apply to a person, the better they're likely to behave in a group.  Because they *want* to be in the dungeon.  It is probably fun or at least feels rewarding.  Let's break these traits down:

1, if you're new to the dungeon, you're excited about new stuff and figuring things out.  Whether you wipe or how long you take probably doesn't matter very much to you.  Because either way, you're doing a new or relatively new dungeon (how cool is that)?

2, if you're there because you like doing stuff in groups, you again probably don't care too much about what actually happens, you're there because you like group content.

3, if you're there for loot, wipes or delays don't affect what the bosses drop, so it's not a huge deal.  Especially since you only get one shot per day in most cases with specific queues (unless you get lucky with a random queue).

4, if you're there to try to do an achievement, you probably want to work with the group and get them to do whatever the achievement is.  Again, one shot per day with specific queues (this group is probably the rarest).

5, if you're there for valor, then anything that slows down the run lowers your valor per hour.

So let's go back to our serious raiders who only care about valor.

1, they've seen the dungeon probably at least a dozen times
2, they get their group content fix in a raid with people they know
3, they don't need the loot from the dungeon
4, they don't want to do achievements (they already have them or don't care about them)
5, they only care about valor/hour.

In short, this is exactly the type of person we DON'T want in the dungeon.  What they want (fast valor) directly conflicts with what several other people might want (exploring and seeing stuff, achievements) and they are probably indifferent to others (group content experience, loot).  In and of itself, we can already see that this is a problematic person to have in a group.

But it gets worse.

Especially with the new expansion, raiders had (just roll with the idea that they did indeed *have* to do these things, I'll have another post discussing that concept soon.  If it makes you feel better, assume I said "raiders felt like they had to" because the differentiation doesn't really matter in this case) to cap conquest each week for 483 items, spam heroics to get 463s, do likely 30+ dailies each day, and valor cap each week.  That's a lot to do in a short amount of time, and there are many raiders who are resentful due to this being a drastic change from Cataclysm where they just could raid each week and maybe do a few dungeons for valor cap.

It's worth noting that I am *not* talking about the people who whine about dailies yet are still honored with Golden Lotus and haven't killed a raid boss or something.  I'm discussing the people who invested the several hours per day on top of additional hours raiding and likely feel burnt out and frustrated.

And now this crowd is feeling like dungeons are their best source of valor (since they're probably done with dailies and raiding only gives 400 valor with all 16 bosses dead).  Worse, doing dungeons for valor seems like monotonous, tedious, terrible busy work.

So we have a group of people who are burned out and frustrated with "chores" thrown into a dungeon where they only care about getting done quickly with people who are most likely far less capable and who have different goals.  Where they constantly see others who are terrible or not trying (as in, doing 15k DPS on tank and spankish fights or dying to stuff like Rattlegore's Bone Spikes) and these things worsen the sole reason the raiders are in the dungeons: valor per hour.

That just sounds like a massive powder keg to me that Blizzard has set up here.

Is it any wonder that some of them will be annoyed when things aren't constantly pulled?

Is it any wonder that some of them will say "screw it, if these people aren't trying I'll just auto-attack?"

Is it any wonder that some of them will insult and be rude to others?

Should these things happen?  Of course not.

But do they happen?  It's human nature.  They're mad at the other players and they're mad at Blizzard for setting things up the way Blizzard did.  Especially when they feel like Blizzard is expecting them to carry others.

So, back to Stubborn's idea of "Man, you need to honor the game."  For this group of people that I'm talking about, I doubt you'll accomplish anything.  Either they're already grinning and bearing it and honoring the game or they're at the point where all they want to do is give the game the middle finger for making them do this stuff instead of only worrying about raiding.

Again, I'm not claiming every heroic raider in a dungeon acts this way (see above about many of them just grinning and bearing it) or excusing those who do.  Just offering some perspective on why it might be happening.

This, then, is the basis of the title.  Some of the conflicts in dungeons (and also LFR) are due to people being there for very different and often conflicting goals with very conflicting capability.  And with the valor upgrade system coming and every serious raider having to continue to cap each week, it seems this problem may only get worse.  You have this whole segment of the population who thinks "Great, let's get this over with" upon starting a heroic, and that's not conducive to a good social experience (note: that feeling applies to more than just heroic raiders, but I'm trying to keep my scope limited).

I think easily 90% of heroic raiders entering these heroic dungeons have, at best, that "let's get this over with" attitude. But when you start with this attitude (or worse), it's easy to cross to the point of not caring at all. Unfortunately, it's fairly common to find people doing 15k DPS on tank and spank fights when they should be doing double that at a minimum (even when starting heroics). And when you see that, it's very easy to adapt the mentality of "screw it, I'll just auto-attack and alt tab to watch Youtube or browse forums or whatever." They feel like "well, if others don't give a damn, why should I?"

And they'd prefer to spend 20 minutes in a dungeon with 10 of them alt-tabbed instead of 15 minutes in a dungeon actually trying. It's a lot less effort on their part and they would actually feel better about the 15k people, since they don't feel like they're carrying people who don't try.

Is it hypocritical? Yes.

Does it hurt the community and dishearten anyone in the group who is trying? Yes.

But people are happy to cut off their nose to spite their face. They're fine with a longer run if they don't feel like they're being taken advantage of (despite the fact it means they're taking advantage of others).

Perhaps the sad thing is that the easiest way to solve this particular problem is to make it so heroic raiders don't feel obliged to ever run dungeons for valor.  It won't fix jerks from other groups within the game, but it'll remove one source and probably make the entire group much happier.

8 comments:

  1. Balk,
    I agree for the most part about how Blizzard has designed a situation in which people are going to get frustrated. The content and gear gating has irked a whole lot of people, and I don't doubt that it's a serious cause of frustration, regardless of the fact that I'm simply refusing to play that way this expansion.

    I agree that it would take some judgment on how to handle a jerk, and part of the judgment is whether or not they're situational or regular. In my experience, situational jerks usually stop being jerks if they're called on it by players who are clearly showing a desire to do the dungeon well. In your "great, let's get this over with" post, a situatiional jerks who just auto-attacked would seem counter-intuitive; he'd be slowing the run down that he so desperately wanted to get over with. If another player were to point that out and make a simple case that EVERYONE wants to get it over with, I'd guess the raider might realize that he wasn't playing with total scrubs and pick up the pace a little. If not, I'd argue he might just be a regular jerk after all.

    At your core, though, you make a good point, that "the game" might not be enough common ground. I think you're right, too; it's not going to work for everyone, and it's not going to move mountains within the community. It's just a simple way to try to smooth things over and remind people why we're coming together.

    Great post!

    Sincerely,
    Stubborn

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  2. "In your "great, let's get this over with" post, a situatiional jerks who just auto-attacked would seem counter-intuitive; he'd be slowing the run down that he so desperately wanted to get over with. If another player were to point that out and make a simple case that EVERYONE wants to get it over with, I'd guess the raider might realize that he wasn't playing with total scrubs and pick up the pace a little."

    I meant something slightly different, but I wasn't really clear.

    I think easily 90% of raiders entering these heroic dungeons have, at best, that "let's get this over with attitude." But when you start with this attitude (or worse), it's easy to cross to the point of not caring at all. Because, unfortunately, it's fairly common to find the "total" scrubs" you referenced. People doing 15k DPS on tank and spank fights when they should be doing double that at a minimum(even when starting heroics). And when you see that, it's very easy to adapt the mentality of "screw it, I'll just auto-attack and alt tab to watch Youtube or browse forums or whatever." They feel like "well, if others don't give a damn, why should I?"

    And they'd prefer to spend 20 minutes in a dungeon with 10 of them alt-tabbed instead of 15 minutes in a dungeon actually trying. It's a lot less effort on their part and they would actually feel better about the 15k people, since they don't feel like they're carrying people who don't try.

    Is it hypocritical? Yes.

    Does it hurt the community and dishearten anyone in the group who is trying? Yes.

    But people are happy to cut off their nose to spite their face. They're be fine with a longer run if they don't feel like they're being taken advantage of (despite the fact it means they're taking advantage of others).

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  3. Amazing how game bloggers often think alike. I completely agree that the design of the game has massive influence on the community it breeds. My response to this discussion lately is exactly that, so I won't post a long page of rebuttal here.

    I think your general analysis of who visits dungeons is spot on. It highlights very well the fact that the interests in the game rarely come together for players and so players are always an obstacle to each other. There's no community to be had in this scenario except what you make in your guilds.

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  4. Yeah, social engineering is huge in a game like WoW. And I think it's especially important to remember that fact in light of things like the whole discussion about reputation and whether dailies/VP capping is optional.

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  5. This was written almost a month ago, and Blizzard has made changes now:

    1. 40 VP per dungeon, 80 on first per day
    2. 40 VP per boss (probably needed as LFR was giving more VP per boss kill than a real raid!)


    Assuming a full 16/16 clear (some in HM, some normal) from a progression raider, now that's 640 VP.

    Well at this point, the raider has options, 72 dailies (the reputation is now far less valuable in 490+ gear because the VP is better spent upgrading gear for raiding), 9 dungeons (5 spread over 5 days if you do 1 per day), or LFR (queue only as off-spec for dual spec classes, since most raiders no longer need main spec gear from LFR).

    Well, at this point, 45 dailies will probably be a necessity to get the 3 golden coins (although right now many raiders have hundreds of lesser coins saved up), so they'll make up the bulk of them.

    That said, the problem still exists.

    A couple of weeks ago, I queued as frost OS (sick of tanking for the night). Anyways, I met a 485+ geared tank. He just kept pulling and chain pulling (probably to stack vengeance). When the healer said "OOM" he kept going. The healer was not very good at mana management IMO, as the tank in 485 gear, even with his (or her) aggressive pulling did not take much damage (ex: his hp stayed above 80% most of the time). Anyways, the dps, we had 1 pulling about 20k dps (considering the AOE, it should be higher than in a raiding environment), and 1 who pulled around 15k (although he was a DOT-heavy class so maybe more understandable).

    The 485 tank realized that between me and him, we were pulling around 75% of the total group's dps. He asked me, do you have a tank spec. If the 2 of us taunted off of each other, we'd pretty much never die. We more or less facerolled the dungeon after I swapped. It was clear to me that he was after 1 thing - VP/hour.

    I think that what Blizzard doesn't get is, in Cata, people complained about nothing to do. The problem is that in MoP, Blizzard introduced a lot of content. So much that it'd require hours of work per day on top of raiding to do. But it's content that most people do not want to do if they had the option.

    - Attackknight

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  6. "The problem is that in MoP, Blizzard introduced a lot of content. So much that it'd require hours of work per day on top of raiding to do. But it's content that most people do not want to do if they had the option."

    I think there's at least two problems you illustrated here.

    First, you're exactly right when you say "per day," because it's limited per day and you couldn't catch up if you fell behind. So people felt like it was daily chores that they could never even skip for a day or fall behind. There was no such thing as playing more on the weekend or something, daily activity or bust.

    Second, the dailies were a mean to an end instead of an end in and of themselves for heroic raiders at a minimum. There's probably people out there who don't want to run dungeons/LFR and they have fun doing dailies and slowly getting 489 gear. This system is best yet in WoW for that crowd, but this crowd also didn't need the valor items to be behind a reputation barrier, because they would only get valor from dailies in the first place. Bit of a weird situation.

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  7. The problem is that they are an end to themselves. Pretty much raiders are going to be doing 45 per week for the foreseeable future because well, the coins are just too good to pass up.

    This is especially true if you're a dual spec, like tank/dps or healer/dps. You need to gear up that off spec. It'll be true I guess until you get BiS for both specs. On the upside, there's nothing rare like Cunning of the Cruel this tier (a trinket that in DS was arguably a "must have" for all casters). In my time raiding DS, I think I only saw like 3 or 4 of them ever drop. I never won it myself, but it was something I guess to work towards.

    For the people that genuinely like dailies, yes, it's a great system for them. They now have access to gear that is competitive to what drops in MSV normal mode and is a tier over the stuff over LFR (sans tier bonus).

    But for raiders - not so much. It's especially interesting for me now with the new PvP dailies. I'm on a PvP server with a 50-50 Alli-Horde split. The opposing faction too has the upper hand in PvP, which makes things difficult, especially if all you want to do is to get your dailies done.

    To be honest, at this point, it's probably best to spend the VP upgrading gear rather than trying to get rep. The only reason to do it is for the 90 coins per week needed.

    But yeah, the problem still does exist. Apparently, I read a blue post that said that it was Blizzard's way of encouraging people to go out and go into challenge modes. I have not attempted them, but it does take quite a while I hear to get golds. It's something earned, and it takes time to have it on farm.

    Also, LFR is another option. It's arguably still "needed" for hybrid specs to gear the OS (depends on your luck I guess with gear). It can be inconsistent. Often groups will 1 shot each boss easily. Other groups have players who on bosses such as Garalon feel that it's a great ideal to stack in the purple circle and to run to the pheromones carrier and bring the pheromones into the melee dps, resulting in, despite 2 successive nerfs, wipes.

    The point is, the DS era of being able to raid and do not much else is over. Frankly, I miss it. It seems to be the lesser evil. At least people who are doing dungeons will actually want to do dungeons (or at least are doing it for the satchel).

    - Attack

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  8. "The problem is that they are an end to themselves. Pretty much raiders are going to be doing 45 per week for the foreseeable future because well, the coins are just too good to pass up."

    You have the meaning of the phrase reversed. Raiders don't do the daily because dailies are their end game content, they do the dailies because they want the coins for raiding (their actual end game content). Hence, dailies are not an end in and of themselves for raiders, they're a stepping stone.

    "This is especially true if you're a dual spec, like tank/dps or healer/dps. You need to gear up that off spec. It'll be true I guess until you get BiS for both specs."

    This is one of the biggest problems of the new valor system as well. Can't keep a current offset.

    "To be honest, at this point, it's probably best to spend the VP upgrading gear rather than trying to get rep. The only reason to do it is for the 90 coins per week needed."

    Oh, absolutely, rep gear was only really relevant for the first month or month and a half.

    "I have not attempted them, but it does take quite a while I hear to get golds."

    Silver's pretty easy to get, with the daily challenge mode that's like 130ish valor for 20-30 minutes. With the catch that you need an appropriate group of five people.

    "The point is, the DS era of being able to raid and do not much else is over. Frankly, I miss it. It seems to be the lesser evil. At least people who are doing dungeons will actually want to do dungeons (or at least are doing it for the satchel)."

    I think this is the problem of MoP for raiders in a nutshell. Very well stated.

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